About IEDTA
EDT stands for Experiential Dynamic Therapy. It is an “umbrella term” which applies Habib Davanloo’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) and a number of therapies which arose out of his work.
There is a substantial body of research demonstrating that EDT treatment is rapid and effective, with gains maintained and even enhanced at long-term follow-up.
Characteristics of EDTs
The Experiential Dynamic Therapies share a number of characteristics. They are all:
Psychodynamic: they are built on parts of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, in that they work with conflicting unconscious forces within the psyche, with a particular focus on defenses, anxiety, avoided feelings, and transference. Other aspects of psychoanalytic theory and practice are de-emphasized and even rejected.
Experiential: EDTs emphasize the importance of experiencing rather than avoiding healthy emotions during psychotherapy sessions, because simply talking about emotions is not sufficient to bring therapeutic change.
Relational: EDTs focus on emotional closeness and attachment, and make central use of the therapeutic relationship for both assessment and treatment.
Transformation-oriented: the goal of the EDTs is to help patients achieve meaningful change as rapidly as possible; for many patients, this means a fundamental shift in their orientation to themselves, their relationships, and the world. While many EDTs retain the words “short-term” in their titles, the foremost goal of an EDT is to achieve significant, lasting change. In many cases, therapy is dramatically shorter than traditional long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.